the fiscal cliff is almost $8 trillion of spending cuts, revenue increases. which if you want to affect the debt, that's a big way of doing it. every economist says if you do that much that quickly, you are going to throw us back into a serious recession. you know what? at some point, we have to stop kicking the can down the road and actually thinking of long-term debt of this country. i'm never a big fan of senator cobern's positions but he's right. at some point we have to stop this. we need to do it quickly. >> and the fact is, we've got a huge spending problem. and so either you have to figure out a way to pay for what you say you want to do or reduce the spending and that's the piece that's not getting the attention it should right now. >> getting the attention from? >> either the media in some cases. they are talking about what we have to do on taxes. somewhere along the line we have to talk about what we have to do on spending. if you do as the president asks and that is raise taxes on the top 2%, it funds the government for 8 days. you can't get there